Welcome to this special edition of Reeling. Tonight
we're going to explore trains in film and the surprisingly many ways
in which they're portrayed.

British films and directors are well represented here - largely because
the British railway system is so deeply embedded in their culture. A search
on the word train in the Internet Movie Database brings up 158 entries
and a surprising number are French films.

Laura
L'arrive D'un Train A La Ciotat:
The Lumiere Brothers' L'Arrive d'un Train a la Ciotat had audiences diving
under their seats in 1895 because they weren't yet attuned to the cinema
and the train hurtling towards them seemed all too realistic. This is
the very first film *ever* and its subject, a train, will continue to
be a major film image, symbol and setting throughout cinematic history.
There's such a wealth of movies which feature trains prominently that
we'll only be able to include a relatively small sampling tonight. We're
going to explore how trains exist in the most everyday aspects of life
to their symbolic use to portray crime, mystery, adventure, history and
society.

Robin
Shadow of a Doubt
The Out of Towners
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg:
One of the most enduring cinema images is the greeting and sendoff on
the train platform. Hellos, goodbyes, tearful separations, good riddances,
welcoming of the troops and the mad dashes of commuters all have taken
place at train stations.

Laura
Murder on the Orient Express
North by Northwest
Strangers on a Train
The Out of Towners:
People live their lives while journeying on trains making the dining car
a focal point. Unlike airline food, trains run the gamut from five star
dining to fast food.

Robin
North by Northwest:
The image of a train entering a tunnel is a well known symbol for another
part life - sex - and no one was better at suggesting that particular
human impulse than Alfred Hitchcock.

Laura
Anna Karenina:
...and everyone knows that sex is linked with death. Jumping in front
of a train is a time honored, if nasty, method of suicide. In 1935, one
of film's most tragic heroine's, Greta Garbo, made perhaps the most famous
lethal leap.

Robin
The Great Train Robbery
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Speed:
Some people may not be intending to commit suicide by train, but their
behavior would sure make you think otherwise. What is it with people's
need to run around on top of moving trains? Ya gotta love stuntmen!

Laura
I Know Where I'm Going
The 39 Steps
Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula:
Trains inspire filmmakers' inventiveness as well. Here are three unique
dissolve shots from Powell and Pressburger, Hitchcock again, and Francis
Ford Coppola that inspire three very different emotions in the viewer.

Robin
Runaway Train
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
The Wild Bunch:
There are very few things that can create a sense of helplessness than
the thought of a runaway train.

Laura
The Fugitive:
The train wreck is powerful man made disaster. One of the most excitingly
filmed wrecks was done by Oscar-nominated director Andrew Davis in 1993

Robin
The 39 Steps:
Fugitives from the law often use trains to make their getaways - that's
what Cary Grant was doing in that earlier clip from North by Northwest.
Here's an earlier Hitchcock flick where another innocent man makes a
run for it.

Laura
A Hard Day's Night
The Warriors
Dr. Zhivago:
Trains, with their first and second class compartments, are frequent
backdrops to display social conflict and class division.

Robin
Shoah
Schindler's List:Trains have historically had a major role to play in times
of war, as we just saw in that scene set during the Communist Revolution.
An even blacker period in world history, the Holocaust, paints the train's
darkest image.

Laura
Before Sunrise:While train journeys had dire, life changing consequences for
Holocaust passengers, they frequently can lead to more life-affirming
changes. Gwyneth Paltrow's life took two very different turns via the
sliding doors of a subway train while Hope Davis finally met her intended
in the last scene of "Next Stop Wonderland." In this next film, an unscheduled
stop in Vienna begins as a lark but ends in true love for Julie Delpy.

Robin
The Great Train Robbery:Train robberies are a staple of such Westerns as "Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid" and "The Wild Bunch." We'll return to cinema's first
decade where a train robbery was the subject of the world's very first
Western.